Sunday, July 29, 2007

Ryne Sandberg

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My favorite 80's player, came out of nowhere in 1984 with 74 extra base hits. Yeah his ballpark helped him some, and he didn't walk quite as much as you would like, but only about 5 HoF 2B are clearly better. Wonder if he would have aged more gracefully if it weren't for his brief retirement (c.f. Home Run Baker). Defensively he was about everything you would want except a little slow on the DP.

Ryno is usually thought of as an 80's player, but it's his early-'90's body of work that stands out the most to me. Sure, he deserved the MVP, and his '85 was a terrific season too, but those were the only two years where I'd really consider him an All-Star until '89. That's when he busts out with a legit HoM peak, and a consecutive one, no less--four straight years playing virtually every day with best-at-position hitting, plus baserunning, and Gold Glove defense in difficult-to-dominate leagues. Interestingly, the 40-HR outburst in '90 doesn't show up nearly as well in my system as the follow-up seasons, particularly 1992 which looks to me like his best year both offensively and defensively. He was good enough to win an MVP the vast majority of years in 1992 (only that Barry guy would beg to differ). All told, a nudge above Murray and the best backloggers, and probably #2 on my 2003 ballot (McGraw comfortably outdistances him for me). A final note--according to James Click's EqBR stat, Ryno is one of the greatest non-SB baserunners of the Retrosheet era.

Because this skeptical reader of my NYT column was asking questions about Sandberg as well, here is an updated Ryno using the new methodology (and without the 2.5% stdev contraction I've been applying to 1987-2005 guys).